New to Red Hat

Jonathan Berry berryja at gmail.com
Thu Mar 24 05:11:14 UTC 2005


On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:32:19 +1100, Dan Bowles <bowlso at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm new to the list and have never used Red Hat Fedora Core 3 or any
> other Linux before. Can anyone give some advice on getting the DVD iso
> image onto a dvd from Windows XP, and then installing it onto a
> partition on the same HDD as Windows XP so that I can test it out?
> 
> Any links to beginners guides would be greatly appreciated...
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Dan Bowles

Hi Dan,
Welcome to Linux.  You ought to be able to burn the DVD iso with
whatever burning software you have.  There should be an option to burn
an iso image.  The exact details will vary depending on what software
you have.  It shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  You might try
looking at the programs help if you cannot find the burn image option.
 This does assume you have a DVD burner, a blank DVD, and software to
burn with : ).
Now for the more challenging part.  I would assume that you currently
have one hard disk with one partition with WinXP on it.  If this is
the case, you will need to make room for Fedora.  If you have multiple
partitions (you see your harddisk as several in "My Computer") then
you can use one of those that is not used.
Now, you mention that you want to do this to "test it out"  If you
only want to test out Linux, I suggest you find a Linux live CD to try
first.  It will allow you to boot from a CD and run Linux without
touching your hard drive.  Knoppix is good, but is Debian based, so it
won't be that much like Fedora.  I've found a few Fedora based live
CDs:
http://dc.qut.edu.au/adios/
http://yui.mine.nu/linux/eberry.html [no association :)]
http://www.linux4all.de/livecd/basilisk/1.40/index.htm
I haven't checked any of these out.  The reason I mention this is your
going to have to do some work to get Fedora installed on the same hard
disk, so I recommend that you really want to do it before you start. 
I think you'll like Linux, though :).
I have started working on some documentation about installing FC3 on
my laptop.  What I've got should give you some clue about what you
will need to do:
http://webpages.uah.edu/~berryja/linux/r3000/
I don't have anything about doing the actual resizing with QtParted
yet, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
Please note that resing partitions is not guaranteed to work.  I don't
want to scare you, it has worked fine for me at least the three times
that I have tried it, but you can mess something up or loose data. 
Just another reason to be sure you really want to install.  If you
follow the suggestions in the "Preparing Windows" section, you should
be fairly safe.  You should have plenty of free space.
If you can, I would suggest that you get a second harddisk (if this is
a desktop) to install Linux to.  It will be much easier (you could
just install to the second disk without touching your current
situation) and you should be able to find a moderate sized disk for
not too much.  I understand if this isn't a possibility, though.
Let us know if you need clarification anywhere or run into any problems.

Jonathan




More information about the fedora-list mailing list